The Canary List: A Novel

by Sigmund Brouwer

Long hug. Enough time for Crockett to pull O’Hare to the side and speak in a low voice. “The old man had to be a priest if he could offer a blessing, right? Why did he go crazy when he decided Jaimie is possessed by a demon?”

  O’Hare looked like a man trying to hold himself together, the look of someone on a commercial flight hearing the pilot announce the jet had run out of fuel.

  “Mr. Grey,” O’Hare said. “Striped clown outfits? That would be the Swiss Guard, in uniform, which meant this took place within Vatican City. It makes sense, as Cardinal Ricci had intended to take Jaimie to meet one of the other cardinals. To test him.”

  “The old man she met was another cardinal?” Crockett asked.

  “I’m almost certain.”

  “A cardinal who attacked Jaimie because she is possessed—” Crockett couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice. “What kind of a test is that?”

  “Cardinal Ricci wanted Jaimie to meet this cardinal because we’ve always wondered if this cardinal hosts one of the devil’s servants.”

  “Repeat that,” Crockett said. “In a way that might even come close to making sense.”

  “Mr. Grey … we’ve never believed that Jaimie was possessed by a demon,” Father O’Hare explained. “Rather that she can sense demons in other people. And that demons, in turn, detect her awareness of them.”

  Sixty-Three

  rockett was trying to grasp the implications of O’Hare’s claim about Jaimie when the door opened again and two men entered. The same men from the BMW he and Mackenzie had ridden in.

  The driver tossed zip-tie plastic handcuffs into the center of the room. He spoke briefly in Italian to O’Hare. O’Hare replied, nodding.

  O’Hare switched to English and spoke to Mackenzie. “He says you need to handcuff me. Then Crockett.”

  “What?” Mackenzie said. “You told me it would be safe in Rome.”

  “He says we are safe,” O’Hare said. “If we do as told. They’ll need you and Jaimie in handcuffs too.”

  “If they know about Jaimie,” Mackenzie said, “we can’t trust them. If we put on these cuffs, we don’t have a chance.”

  One of the men barked to silence them.

  As a teacher, each year Crockett was part of safety-first training for kids. The moment of resistance, they were taught again and again, was at the beginning of an attack. Yell, scream, run if anyone tried to move you into a car. Once you were in a car, escape was almost impossible.

  It was no different here. Once they were handcuffed, they would be immobilized. Yet all this was so utterly insane for Crockett that he felt like he was on the water, on his surfboard again, dealing with a shark attack. Then, like now, it was about reacting at a primal level to an intellectual assessment. But most of all, it was about reacting.

  While the driver focused on the conversation between Mackenzie and O’Hare, Crockett dove forward. The distance was short between him and the men in the gray suits. He was hoping to knock one of the men through the doorway, hoping for help from O’Hare.

  He expected to feel the impact of the top of his skull hitting the first man’s chest. Instead, there was nothing but air. Both men stepped aside, but one tripped him. He landed hard, falling through the doorway, and as he was trying to recover, he felt a knee in his back. Then the unbelievable sensation of a million fish hooks pulling at his skin and simultaneously a wire tightening around his forehead and down and around his armpits, savagely jerking his chin down in convulsions toward his chest, his arms flopping and legs cramping.

  By the time he realized he’d been hit by a stun gun, it was over, but his muscles were still vibrating, and he couldn’t even manage to groan as he was dragged back into the room. He hoped he had not wet his pants.

  On his side, limp and too exhausted to roll over, he heard the instructions in Italian again. Crockett heard O’Hare speak in English but couldn’t make sense of that either until Mackenzie knelt beside him. He smelled her lotion again, felt her hands take his wrists, and heard the ratcheting of the plastic zip-ties as his hands were drawn together.

  Whatever was happening, it was clear these were enemies of O’Hare and Mackenzie. Which, by default, probably made them his enemies too.

  More barking in Italian, followed by a translation from O’Hare. “They said to cuff his hands behind his back. Not in front.”

  “Tell them too bad,” Mackenzie said. “He’s hurt badly enough already. If they want him cuffed otherwise, they can do it themselves.”

  She helped Crockett sit up, pulled him to the wall, and leaned him against it. She ran her hands softly across his face and whispered to him. “I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

  One of the guards pulled her away.

  His vision was clearing. Beyond her, Crockett saw O’Hare putting Jaimie in handcuffs. Then saw O’Hare turn around so that Mackenzie could cuff him. Then, finally, one of the gray suits cuffed Mackenzie. The four of them now, in some room in the bowels of an ancient church, with only one door out, guarded by the man with a stun gun.

  Crockett was panting, trying to still his muscles, when another man stepped inside the room to survey them. He was tall, dressed in elegant brown slacks and a thin cashmere sweater, with short-cropped dark hair.

  “Your Eminence,” O’Hare said with light irony. “What an honor.”

  Eminence. Yet another cardinal?

  “Not another word,” the man said.

  Mackenzie moaned slightly and pushed herself away, back up against the wall.

  The cardinal smiled at Mackenzie. “You are such a fool. I know everything you’ve done. Including your pathetic attempts to snare me by posing as a witch.” Then a sneer. “I liked you much better when you were a child. You do remember the rabbit, don’t you?”

  Mackenzie bowed her head.

  Then he walked up to Jaimie’s shoulder and touched her. Jaimie stared at him defiantly.

  The cardinal stepped back and spoke to the gray suits. One walked to the tall, elegant man and, from behind, maneuvered him into a bear hug. Even with his arms bound, the older man was able to remove a band from his wrist and hand it to the second man, who stepped outside the room.

  Later, Crockett would attribute the unbelievable moments that followed to a post-stun hallucination because they were just too unbelievable for reality.

  As the door closed, it seemed to Crockett that the tall, elegant man transformed, going from human to some kind of hairless werewolf. The man’s face became a rictus of bared teeth and hatred, and he tried to shake himself free of the bear hug by lunging forward. His bodyguard strained, and he growled unearthly utterances and spit and hissed at Jaimie.

  “Show no fear, Jaimie!” O’Hare said. “You know what to say! Say it now!”

  Still handcuffed, Jaimie took a step toward the frothing man and spoke clearly, but with her voice shaking.

  Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli, sia santifico il tuo nome …

  The man howled, still in the grip of the man behind him.

  Father O’Hare joined in the chanting with Jaimie.

  The howling grew louder, and the man’s face contorted even more violently. Crockett had no doubt the man was about to tear himself loose, but the second gray suit had returned to the room with the cardinal’s bracelet. He stepped into the center then slid the bracelet onto the cardinal’s wrist.

  Immediately, the older man grew quiet. Dignified. He stopped fighting the guard who held him.

  O’Hare stopped chanting, then Jaimie.

  The older man spoke sharply to the two guards. They nodded and bowed their heads, and he stepped backward, out of the room.

  One of the two guards spoke directly to O’Hare, paused, then nodded.

  “He’s asked me to translate,” O’Hare said. “He told me if we don’t follow instructions, they will shoot Jaimie. They’ve promised we will be kept here for a couple of days, then released.”

  “Here? In the church of Domitilla?” Crockett asked the man. He was keenly aware of the weight o
f his horn-rimmed glasses. For what felt like the hundredth time, he pushed them up his nose again. How long would the hidden video camera record?

  “Domitilla was built at the entrance to the cemetery of thousands upon thousands of long-dead Christians,” O’Hare answered. “They are going to take us into the necropolis below—where there are miles and miles of catacombs, four levels deep.”

  Sixty-Four

  ne of their captors walked behind Jaimie, his hand wrapped in her hair. The other held the pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other. O’Hare, Mackenzie, and Crockett walked ahead of them, obeying commands at every turn through a series of tunnels that grew narrower as they descended stairs cut into the stone, finally reaching a door.

  Signs above it gave a warning in different languages. German. French. Italian. English. Spanish. Clearly meant for tourists.

  DO NOT GO PAST THIS POINT WITHOUT A GUIDE.

  MANY TUNNELS ARE NOT MAPPED.

  The man with the pistol spoke in rapid Italian.

  “The door is open,” O’Hare translated. “He wants us to slowly go through it, one at a time.”

  No choice but to obey.

  Deeper into the tunnels, now beyond the sanitized tourist area, the flashlight beam from behind Crockett bounced light off the volcanic rock of the narrow tunnels. The creep factor was high for him. Not only did he feel the tension of men at his back with a pistol and the worry of what the men intended to do to them, he saw the coffin-sized ledges had been cut into the walls and filled with shrouds covering bones, the light occasionally showing hair still attached to a skull. The ledges were arranged like bunk beds, sometimes two or three high, so that every few steps took them past the remains of long-dead Christians on each side.

  At every turn, they were commanded to stop, and Crockett would hear a mysterious scratch.

  They advanced deeper and deeper.

  The perfect place to cover up a murder, to leave the dead among a labyrinth of the dead.

  The darkness was beyond anything Madelyne could have imagined. It was like a presence, squeezing her awareness with a cold physicality. It didn’t help, knowing that within arm’s length were the bones of men and women whose bodies had lain in the stone chambers for undisturbed centuries.

  From the beginning, months earlier, O’Hare had promised her nothing would go wrong. O’Hare promised he had the backing and help of Cardinal Ricci, one of the most powerful cardinals in Rome. The priest promised that everything Madelyne and Jaimie shared with O’Hare would remain secret. And most of all, O’Hare had promised that Madelyne would be safe from the one man she’d been terrified of since childhood.

  But O’Hare had failed.

  Because the two men had left them, commanding them not to move, the flashlight beam getting smaller and smaller, until it had flicked off, isolating the four of them. Alone. In the depths of the labyrinth.

  Sixty-Five

  e’ll be okay,” Mackenzie told Jaimie. “Just lean into me.”

  With all of them standing on the rock floor of the tunnel, the sound of Mackenzie’s voice told Crockett she was barely a foot away, but he wouldn’t even be able to see his own hand if he reached for her. The darkness was so horrible for Crockett that he lifted his manacled hands and pressed a knuckle into a closed eye, just for the sensation of light it gave him.

  “He’s not ever going to send someone to get us,” Jaimie answered Mackenzie. “I think pretending we’ll be okay will just make this worse.”

  “Jaunie …”

  Jaimie didn’t let Mackenzie continue. “They left us in handcuffs. No water. Nothing. If he really meant that someone would come back after a new pope is elected, we’d have water at least. Right, Father O’Hare? And this is the perfect place to leave bodies. We won’t ever be found, even if someone tried looking for us.”

  “I prefer to hope for the best,” O’Hare said. “But if you’ll pardon the pun, yes, things do look dark.”

  Crockett had to know. “Jaimie, what was that scratching sound every time we turned?”

  “It was chalk. They traced our way here. If we had a light, we could find our way back the way he did.”

  But, of course, they didn’t have light.

  “Anybody have anything sharp?” Crockett said. “Let’s at least get out of the handcuffs.”

  “Maybe rub one set against the other,” Mackenzie suggested. “Let the plastic heat up?”

  “Mr. G, your hands are in front of you,” Jaimie said. “Dr. Mackenzie, you have a pin in your hair, right? Can you let Mr. G pull it out? Mr. G, can you hurry? I have to pee really bad.”

  “I’m right here.” Crockett tried to locate Mackenzie by sound. “I’ll move closer.”

  He reached forward. His fingers brushed against something solid but yielding.

  “That’s me,” Mackenzie said sharply. “And my head is a little higher.”

  “Sorry,” Crockett said. Couldn’t help but grin in the darkness. His fingers found the pin in Mackenzie’s hair. Slowly, gently, he withdrew the pin, the type with a small plastic ball on top.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “How about helping Dr. Mackenzie first,” Jaimie said. It was weird for Crockett, the disembodied voice coming from the cool black of the air around him. “What you need to do is push the pin between the plastic teeth of the tab and the backward teeth that hold the zip-tie tab in place. Then you can pull the tab loose.”

  “Dr. Mackenzie?”

  “I’m turning,” she said. “My back should be toward you now.”

  Crockett held the pin in his right hand. He reached forward with his left hand.

  He found Mackenzie’s wrists with his left hand. He tried to visualize Jaimie’s instructions, seeing the pin slip into the small gap between the tab and the teeth. At a slow and deliberate pace, he found the gap and pushed the pin into it. The tab slid upward as he pulled. He made sure to keep a finger on the top of the pin’s plastic ball so he wouldn’t lose it.

  “You should be able to slide your hand out now,” he told Mackenzie.

  It took him fifteen minutes to free Mackenzie and Jaimie and O’Hare from the plastic handcuffs, moving cautiously so he wouldn’t drop the pin. When he finished, Jaimie unlocked his handcuffs.

  “Cool trick,” he told Jaimie. “Where’d you learn it?”

  “Mr. G, it’s routine,” she said. “All kids who’ve spent time in juvie know about this. Think we don’t learn about stuff like this in foster homes?”

  Sixty-Six

  aimie and Mackenzie had moved farther down the tunnel, so that Jaimie could have privacy as she took care of her urgent business.

  “Jaimie is right,” Crockett said to O’Hare while she was out of earshot. “They are not sending anyone back for us.”

  “I’m afraid your assessment is accurate, Mr. Grey.”

  “I’m thinking that by the time people are jammed together in a necropolis, first-name basis is appropriate.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Grey.” Crockett heard the humor in O’Hare’s voice.

  “So, how bad is the situation?” Crockett said, sobering again. “I mean in terms of trying to get out of these catacombs?”

  “As bad as you can imagine,” O’Hare answered. “Ten miles of tunnels. Even guides have been lost for days in the catacombs. This is a labyrinth, and we’re somewhere off the mapped area. You heard what he did, using chalk marks to find his way back. If we had a light, maybe we’d have a chance of getting back to the door. But without a light, we’d just be wandering uselessly. Or if we had a compass, it would stop us from going in circles. Maybe in an hour or two, we’d find one of the doors that seal off the unmapped areas. But no light or no compass, it’s not promising.”

  “So since I’m about to die,” Crockett said, “at least satisfy my curiosity. What did I see back there? The whole werewolf routine? And what’s going on that this guy is willing to murder four people by dumping them in the catacombs?”

  “Mr. Grey, I’ve performed hundr
eds upon hundreds of exorcisms. Most were successful. Some were not. Without fail, demons hide inside the host for as long as possible. It takes hours and hours of prayer and confrontation to get a demon to acknowledge it’s there. And again, without fail, once the demon knows it has been exposed, it reacts as violently as possible. That’s why an exorcism demands a team. What you saw was a confirmation of what I told you earlier. Unless she is wearing her bracelet, Jaimie can sense demons in other people. When it happens, the demons react no differently than when their presence is exposed during an exorcism.”

  “What if a person like me doesn’t believe in demons?”

  “Frankly, it is relevant what you believe.” O’Hare sounded matter-of-fact. “But do you have another explanation for what you saw?”

  “The guy is insane. He believes he’s possessed, and he believed Jaimie could detect the demon inside him, so he reacted as if that were reality. Some people are good at hiding their insanity. And someone like that would be easily susceptible to believing that demons exist. They would be just as susceptible to believing that the words you chanted are like kryptonite.”

  “Kryptonite?”

  “If someone was insane enough to believe he was Superman, then he’d have to believe that rock painted like kryptonite would stop him. Jaimie is his kryptonite.”

  “Your skepticism defines the problem here. I wished I could convince more cardinals of the existence of demons … because demons prey on humans, Mr. Grey. We know it, but don’t acknowledge it. Vampire legends, for example, are a reflection of our race’s subconscious awareness that we have been stalked for as long as we have been humans. To fight a danger, first you need to be aware of it.”

  “Dr. Mackenzie said you were desperate to fight Satanism in the Vatican.” Crockett thought better about belaboring his skepticism. “The guy back there, he was Cardinal Saxon, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. His Eminence Ethan Saxon. Los Angeles archdiocese. He’s the man most favored to become the next pope.”